Chinese real estate developer Vanke has complied with the works schedule and completed the interior setting, getting the first "end of work" certification.
Milan - Nearby the Lake Arena rises the first pavilion already completed in all its parts. It is "Building community through food", designed by Daniel Libeskind for Vanke, Chinese multinational corporation of real estate, which has gained the first "end of work" certification issued by the organizing committee of Expo Milano 2015. Works began in June 2014 and lasted less than ten months.
The sinuous geometrical design of the pavilion is inspired by ancient chinese landscape painting, the Sacred Mountain of China, and has been made possible by a covering of more than 4,000 red ceramic tiles, produced in Sassuolo and able to change hue and color depending on the light, which recall the scale skin and the shape of Loong, which is Chinese dragon, in charge of rain and harvest in ancient Chinese culture.
Inside, the pavilion has an exhibition design signed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates: a 310 square meters wide bamboo forest, which was realized with wood imported directly from China and that, thanks to the metaphor of roots, trunks and branches, represents the Vanke commitment towards local communities.
The rods are holding up a forest of 200 screens projecting all around the visitor, in a coordinated way, scenes related to nature, food and culture of China, in a representation of the "Shitang", a Chinese word meaning "dining hall", which represents the traditional social Chinese structure keeping on existing in contemporary society. The "Shitang" is also where Chinese citizens and workers consume their meals as a community, and is an important moment to strengthen and renew mutual relations, values and traditions.
In the upper floors, there are a VIP lounge and an open roof terrace, offering a breath-taking view of the nearby Italian pavilion and of the Lake Arena with the Tree of Life at its center.
Overall, the Vanke Pavilion is one of the most daring and visionary construction of Expo Milano 2015, a "sculpture" building made up on the outside by assembling unique and completely sustainable pieces (the Casalgrande Padana tiles production process is a closed-cycle where all the processing wastes are treated and reused), and on the inside by a sophisticated visual installation, thanks to the power of 10 media servers which are processing and managing simultaneously a stream of 40 total HD images outputs.
For the realization of the pavilion were used 150 tons of steel structures, 19 kilometers of linear rods to support the tiles, 2.5 kilometers of optical fiber, 1200 Bamboo vertices and 200 monitor displays. At the end of the Expo all the steel elements will be collected and reused.
The team which completed the pavilion in the scheduled timetable is made up by J&A, project manager and director of works, Bodino Engineering, responsible for construction and external fittings, NUSSLI Group, for the realization of the bamboo forest installation, and CWS Multimedia, for the development and management of multimedia devices.
China Vanke is the largest Chinese operator in the residential property field: is listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and provides over half a million residential units and management services to 1.5 million Chinese people with annual sales of 215.13 billion yuan ($34.64 billion).
